


Snarl

by 221b_hound



Series: Lady Akela [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Gen, Not Season/Series 02 Compliant, Reichenbach Fix-It, Werewolf Mrs Hudson, kitty Riley isn't nice, protective Mrs Hudson, psychological violence, stalkerish, this is still probably a bit harsh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 21:25:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1617596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moriarty might no longer threaten mrs Hudson's pack, but then there's that dreadful newspaper article. It's all being retracted of course, but Sherlock thinks Kitty Riley will probably try to save face with more gutter journalism at his expense.</p><p>Well, Mrs Hudson won't be standing for that nonsense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snarl

**Author's Note:**

> People wanted more of werewolf Mrs Hudson, and then I thought about other things from Reichenbach and then this happened. Looks like I have an occasional new series after all. 
> 
> Akela is the wise old grey wolf from Kipling's The Jungle Book, which is where I got the series name.

Kitty Riley is a bit drunk and so doesn't notice until she lifts the key to the lock that the lock is broken and her door ajar. She briefly wonders if it's Richard, before remembering that Richard is dead. And also, he's not Richard.

Richard is - or was - a lying manipulative psychopath named Jim Moriarty whose throat was torn out in a brutal murder two weeks ago, along with his apparent boyfriend, a vicious mercenary wanted in four continents, named Moran.

Richard/Moriarty had come to her weeks before his arrest, worried, he said at what was planned. He wanted someone to know the truth, he'd said, in case it all went pear-shaped. Kitty had given Holmes an opportunity to state his side at the courthouse, and he'd thrown it back at her.

Then her informant had been murdered, but the intel was too good to pass up. She wrote the story. He would have wanted it that way, she told herself. Well, she was right, there.

The newspaper decided to publish the expose of Holmes despite Richard Brook's awful demise. Sensational stuff, even if the piece stopped just short of accusing the arrogant prick of actually committing the murder. No evidence, after all.

The story was published two days ago.

Brook's true identity was revealed this morning. Headlines everywhere except her own paper. Someone kept them out of that news loop on purpose, though she doesn't know how.

Kitty's reputation is in tatters. The newspaper is being hauled gleefully over the coals by the rest of the press. TV chat shows are having a field day. The legal department is printing retractions and apologies and pretty much rolling over and showing their bellies left right and centre, trying to stave off a defamation suit, even though Holmes hasn't said a peep.

Cowards.

Kitty won't go down without a fight. Brook may have been a bad guy, but Holmes is no saint. Enough of the story is true that she might yet salvage something from this. There's the whole drug addiction and stints in rehab, that's got to be worth some ground. Misfit, morbid kid grows up drug addled and now he interferes with the police cases. Oh yes, it's still got legs. She can convince her editor of it, she's sure. She'll keep her job and smack that bastard Holmes down yet for the way he treated her.

At the sight of her damaged door, Kitty wonders if she's been burgled or if there is someone waiting inside, but she's angry and reckless, and a bit drunk, having been drowning her bitter sorrows - and did she say angry? Fuck this. And if it's Holmes in there with his little fuckbuddy Watson then fuck 'em both anyway.

She stomps into the house, sees the light is on and is already hurling abuse at the two of them.

"If you've come to gloat, you pricks...!"

But it's not that pair of tossers. It's some old lady in a floral frock, fussing with her tizzy hair and wearing an embarrassed smile. Kitty struggles to place her, then remembers her research. This is Martha Hudson. The landlady at Baker Street.

Kitty stumbles in her shoes, drops her keys, stumbles again as she bends to pick the keys up, and kicks her shoes off in a rage before she can sprain her bloody ankle in the things.

The old lady, Hudson, just waits patiently, with a weird kind of encouraging smile on her face, as though to say 'it's all right, dear' and that just makes Kitty more annoyed.

"What the fuck are you doing here? How'd you get into my house?"

"Oh, I just came by for a little word. Sherlock said today that he thought you might try to write a follow up piece to still hurt him, now that the interview with that wicked boy has been shown up for what it was."

"And what was that?"

"An attack from a madman, of course," says Mrs Hudson simply, and a little surprised, as though it should be obvious. "I thought Sherlock was wrong, though. He is sometimes, though don't tell him I said so. He can be a bit sensitive. You must be so cross yourself, Moriarty making a fool of you like that."

"Richard was an arsehole. Doesn't mean he didn't give me the goods. You think I didn't do my research on Holmes?"

And she had. She'd called those clinics, spoken to those old acquaintances from school and Uni. So what if they clearly had it in for Holmes? They backed up every word, about his drug habits, his sociopathic nature, his macabre interests.

Fat lot of use that is now. She should have done better research on Richard.

It still doesn't answer the question, which is, "How did you get in here? Did you break in? Did that shit Holmes send you here to break in and try to bribe me to shut up?"

Mrs Hudson laughs lightly, as though this is a charming misunderstanding. "Oh heavens no. Sherlock doesn't know I'm here. He'd be so cross. He doesn't think you're worth the effort."

Mrs Hudson smiles as though this is not an insult. "He can be a bit rude sometimes I know, but I'm terribly fond of him, and people have been so unkind to him in his life. So I thought I'd come to see you myself, to see if there was anything I could say to convince you to leave the boy alone. I saw your door was ajar and I called out _yoo-hoo_ and there wasn't an answer, and I worried that you'd been hurt, by the same terrible people who did away with that Moriarty fellow. Since you'd worked with him, after all. So I came in to see if you were all right and there was... this mess. So I thought I should wait for you.Keep an eye on things till you got home."

Kitty blinks at this unlikely but sincere speech. The daft old biddy is surely no threat, just an interfering motherly type. But it's only when Mrs Hudson says 'there was this mess' and gestures that Kitty sees her living room properly.

She can see it now: the damage. Deep gouges in the coffee table. In the wall. Carpet pulled and....chewed? Each of her paintings has a crack across the glass, though the paintings themselves haven't been vandalised. Not like the television, which has four massive scratches in the screen, like claw marks.

The kitchen, too, has been destroyed in a weirdly subtle manner, hard to see at first glance. The benches are entirely covered with fragments of crockery. The fridge door is open and food in it is a mangled mess, splashed all over the place inside. Something nasty sits in a molten lump in the microwave, and Kitty suspects it's a pile of plastic containers zapped to slag. There's a weird smell, anyway.

There are scratches there too, long furrows in the benchtop, the fridge door, the floor.

But Mrs Hudson is sitting primly, looking concerned and kind, her own nails perfectly ordinary old lady nails, tinted with nail polish. Her hands are soft and wrinkled. She didn't make those scratches.

"What do you want?" Kitty snaps, spooked but still angry.

"Would you really write another article being so cruel about Sherlock? Would you be so unkind?"

"I'm a journalist," snaps kitty haughtily, covering uneasiness with disdain, "It's my job to uncover the truth."

"But you failed to do that so badly with the first story," says Mrs Hudson, sounding a little hurt, "And he's a good boy really. He's had his troubles of course. Haven't we all? But he's not a bad boy."

"He's a bastard."

"Oh really now, dear," Mrs Hudson admonishes her, as though bothered by the word, "There's no need to be so rude."

"And you're a deranged old bat, if you think you're going to change my mind. Get out of my house. Get the fuck out before I call the police."

Mrs Hudson smiles, and it's innocent and creepy as fuck. "Do you think that nice Mr Lestrade would come? Such a good lad. He helped me move my sofa once. It's my hip, you know." She pats her own hip solicitously.

Kitty takes a sharp breath and feels suddenly sober and suddenly afraid, and she doesn't understand why.

"Get out."

Mrs Hudson gets out, but not before they exchange a few more words at the door. Kitty wants to slam the door shut in the old woman's face but can't. She watches her leave instead, watches her walk into the night. There's something about the way that old woman walks that is disturbing. For a woman with tizzy hair, in a chintzy floral frock and sensible shoes, there's something... prowling about the way she moves.

Kitty switches off the front door light in a hurry, so that she can't see the old bat any more

But when the light goes off, she notices a strange glint in the darkness on the street, like some predator is looking back at her. Sizing her up. No doubt it's a trick of the light.

No doubt.

Kitty shuts the door with a slam and engages the deadbolt, which still works. She'll report the break-in and arrange a locksmith in the morning.

Exhausted and shaking, she goes up to bed. Everything upstairs looks fine. Untouched. It's safe. The intruder didn't make it up here.

Kitty prepares for bed then pulls back the pillows to fetch her flannel pyjamas.

Her pyjamas under the pristine pillows are in shreds.

She recoils then takes a breath and, hands shaking, goes to the drawer for another pair - but everything in it is likewise in shreds.

Frantic, she yanks open the drawers up and down her unmolested dresser.

Everything in every drawer is in shreds.

She flings open wardrobe and yes ( _no! Jesus fuck, this is terrifying, no!_ ) everything there is in tatters. Rent by claws but not in a frenzy. These rips and tears are all evenly spaced. They've been torn with deliberation as much as rage. Every scrap of clothing she owns. Destroyed.

Wasn't Richard-that-is-really-Moriarty torn apart by claws?

She should run, Kitty knows. It's what she wants to do. But what if this this this _thing_ is waiting for her outside. (Cold eyes, predator's eyes, in the dark, and does she remember now a snarl? A glint of teeth? A _warning_?)

Weeping in terror, Kitty dresses in her grubby clothes - the only clothes she still owns - and wraps the duvet around her shivering body. She fetches the hammer she keeps under the bed for security and huddles in the bath for the night. It's not comfortable, but it feels defensible. A little.

Kitty knows that there is no way she can make any charge stick to that apparently sweet old lady. She knows even if she could, she's much too frightened to try. She keeps thinking of that last exchange by the door.

"Stay safe, dear," Mrs Hudson had said, gently. "Whoever did this must hate you very much. Perhaps you hurt someone they love. Perhaps you wrote cruelly about someone's child. So many unstable people in the world. It's a terrible thing, no matter how much their rage may be justified. The drive to protect one's family isn't really rational, don't you think?"

And she'd left. And Kitty had turned out the front light. And those animal eyes had glared at her in the darkness, and maybe she had heard a low snarl of warning.

Kitty thinks that she might consider her friend Sylvia's persistent offer to quit the rat race and move west, to work for Sylvia's thriving art and souvenir gallery down in Cornwall. Take up PR, leave journalism and London far behind.

She'd call Sylvia right away, but her phone is in the bedroom and there is no way Kitty is leaving the safety of this bathtub until dawn. If she can bring herself to leave it even then.

Kitty doesn't sleep, not for one moment, all that long night. She shivers, she weeps, and she plans how to run away and _hide hide hide_ forever from that sweet, terrifying landlady.  
*


End file.
